RGB “Tilty cube”

[Ben’s] introduction to microcontrollers was this fun little gift he calls the “tilty cube”. It is an acrylic box with 3 LEDs mounted inside that changes color based off of how you tilt it. Sounds like a fun toy, and a good project to learn with. [Ben] chose the PIC12F615 as the brains and laid it all out on a perfboard. Since this was his first microcontroller experience he had to learn how to blink the LEDs, then figure out PWM etc. Though there is no video of the project in its finished state, since it was given away as a gift, we assume he figured it out pretty well. He does state that the LEDs are dimmer than he had hoped and offers some thoughts on how he would do the entire project better next time.

Is there a video anywhere? I’m interested to see how smooth the color changes are and how complex the algo is. The way I would do it is use each axis of a 3-axis tilt sensor to adjust the R/G/B PWM values. So tilting along the X axis would change the R value, etc.

Hey, I’m the guy who put this together. Sorry about calling it a Til(t)ty cube. The algorithm is just that, each axis controls a different color. The colors change rather smoothly, it’s a cool effect, but I never made a video before I gave it away, so you’d be hard pressed to find one.

One thing I like about this site is how often a post will inspire others in the following days that are improved versions of the original post, or “this is how that should have been done”. Totally waiting for follow-ups here.